


Behind The Curve

by imogenbynight



Series: Odds and Ends [10]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Awkward-around-cute-guys!Dean, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-06
Updated: 2015-03-06
Packaged: 2018-03-16 14:28:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3491771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imogenbynight/pseuds/imogenbynight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which a recently-out-as-bisexual Dean has an awkward crush on a guy he's seen around his brother's college campus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Behind The Curve

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the tumblr prompt; “So I found this waterfall…”

There’s this guy he’s seen around the campus a few times. He’s kinda scruffy. Kinda weird. He wears cardigans a lot, which isn’t something Dean ever thought he’d be into, but for some reason every time he happens to meet this guy’s eye across the quad or at the coffee shop or the campus bar, he feels his stomach tense up and his pulse flutter like there’s a moth flitting helplessly around in his rib cage.

It’s the worst.

Dean isn’t shy. At least, he never used to be. With girls he’s never been shy. With girls, he’s confident and witty and smooth as hell. But with guys? He’s hopeless. He’s sure it’s just because he’s kind of new to this whole thing. The dating guys thing.

Honestly, he’s a little embarrassed about it. Most people his age have been out and proud for longer than he’s even really known he swung in anything but a very straight line, and as a direct result of that he’s drastically behind the curve when it comes to successfully talking to guys he’s interested in.

Once it clicked in his irritatingly slow-on-the-uptake twenty-nine year old brain that he was bisexual, he’d gone out to a bar and tried hitting on a guy. The few words he did manage to stutter out made less than no sense, and he’d gone home alone and more than a little humiliated.

It’s not that he’s never been invited back to a guy’s place since then, though. Men, when it comes down to it, are generally pretty easy if all they want is to get laid. But that’s where the problem is. He’s tired of meaningless hookups.

Whether he’s looking for a guy or a girl or someone outside of that spectrum altogether, he’d like his next relationship to mean something. To last longer than the time between stepping out of a bar and crawling out of a bed. He’s come to terms with that. It’s more difficult to put into practice than he’d expected.

The day he signed up for a dating app and selected interested in men and women, he received an onslaught of appallingly graphic and poorly spelled messages from men whose profile pictures showed nothing but their abs. The one guy who actually had a face in his photo and opened with a friendly hello replied to Dean’s question of “how are you?” with “rock hard” and a photo of his junk that made Dean feel awkward and utterly inexperienced to the point that he’d deleted the app altogether.

But maybe, he thinks, he can approach this guy. He’s pretty sure he’s into dudes. He saw him getting into the drivers seat of a car with a marriage equality bumper sticker once, which puts a strong tick in the maybe column, and he’s pretty sure they’ve had a little eye magic in the few times they’ve passes one another. It’s worth a shot.

He’s kinda nerdy looking, too, and a little shorter than Dean. Maybe a year or two younger, he thinks. Oddly enough, that helps. It makes the idea of approaching him a little less threatening. A little less intimidating.

He figures that really, he’s got nothing to lose. He doesn’t actually attend the college himself—he’s only ever here when he’s meeting Sam for lunch or coming to check out one of Charlie’s media installments. So if he makes a fool of himself, it’s fine. It’s probably fine.

Still, his plan to actually talk to the guy is just hypothetical, until it suddenly isn’t.

He sees him as he’s walking back toward the parking lot after meeting Charlie for coffee one Tuesday afternoon. It’s raining, and the guy is standing under an umbrella outside the juice bar, holding a giant green cup and waiting for the downpour to lessen a little. Dean starts walking toward him before he’s had a chance to think of a conversation topic, and just as he realises this and falters in his step, the guy looks up and meets his eye. Dean smiles without meaning to. The guy smiles back and lifts his hand in a small wave.

"Shit," Dean murmurs to himself, and looks over his shoulder as casually as possible to make sure he’s not waving at someone else, but when he finds nobody there he swallows his fear and makes his way over.

"Hi," the guy says when he gets there, lowering his drink and looking Dean over with warm, brown eyes that are even nicer up this close than they had been at a distance.

"Uh, hey," Dean says back, and tries to relax his grip around the half-empty grande caramel latte in his hand. "Hi."

"You said that already," the guy tells him with a grin, and Dean wants to kick himself. He’s not this pathetic.

"Oh," he says, and lets out a horribly nervous laugh. "Yeah. I guess I did. Um…"

"I’m Aaron."

"Aaron,” he repeats, smiling, and the guy raises his brow, a lopsided smirk on his face that Dean finds himself staring at until he realizes he hasn’t given his own name. He sticks out his hand, forgetting he’s holding the coffee until the last moment, and switches. Jesus Christ, he thinks. “I’m Dean.”

“Nice to finally meet you, Dean,” Aaron says back. 

"Finally, yeah, it’s good. Nice."

Dean shakes his head and wills his mouth and his brain to cooperate. He does not turn bright red. He actively refuses to acknowledge the possibility. Instead he tries to focus on the fact that Aaron said  _finally._  Like he’s been wanting to meet Dean. Like he’s been noticing him right back.

“So,” Dean says, casting around for a conversation topic. Anything at all to make this trainwreck a little less appalling. “You doing anything right now?”

Internally he high fives himself for managing to use a complete sentence, but then Aaron shakes his head and takes a sip from his orange smoothie and asks with a wry smile, “Why, you wanna get out of here?” and Dean feels himself floundering all over again.

“Oh. Not… um. I didn’t mean— Just, I thought maybe if you want to grab a coffee—” Dean looks down at his own cup and then over at the mostly full drink in Aaron’s hand. He exhales. He’s definitely red now. “Or not.”

"Yeah, I’m all set, drinkwise," he says, needlessly lifting his cup. "But maybe we could go for a walk?"

Dean’s eyes widen a little, because he’d figured his own utter lack of charm would have put the guy off completely by now, but somehow he’s just being subjected to a warm smile and playful eyes that make him want to grin from ear to ear.

“Awesome,” he says on a breath, and Aaron flashes a smile at him. “Actually… I found this waterfall. In the park? Behind the arts building?”

"A waterfall, hey?” Aaron asks, bumping his shoulder as he moves to walk toward the arts building, glancing back at Dean with a glint in his eye. "Sounds romantic."


End file.
